csa champions

This year Mr. S and I joined our first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). We're lucky enough that my place of employment serves as a drop-point for our weekly fruits and veggies (though we've seen very few of the former), so all I need to do is bag up our goods and carry them home every Thursday. Easy enough.

Not as easy, however, has been making it through our weekly load before the next one arrives. A bag of green beans, some squash, a bunch of cabbage and the occasional cucumber have ended up in the trash. I hate, hate, hate throwing away food -- especially fresh, organic, delicious veggies. But, considering the Veggie Wasting Tales I've heard from CSA veterans, we've been first-time CSA champions.

We plowed through stir-fry after stir-fry early on in the season (I don't ever want to see cabbage or summer squash again), made it through bowl after bowl of green beans, and managed not to waste a single bit of a vat of cabbage-cucumber-dill salad. We've tried new recipes (that even used the tops of the carrots and that Mr. S actually liked!) and have fallen into a weekly routine of eating the most delicious caprese salads I've ever had straight out of our big yellow mixing bowls. It's been a delicious summer indeed.

The low point was near the end of Cabbage Mania, when I found myself saying out loud "I don't want to do the CSA again next year." But, now that we've moved on to sweet corn (oh heavenly sweet corn, I've never tasted any corn so ripe or delicious as you), basil and six kinds of tomatoes (and started baking the zucchini into bread instead of eating it raw), I'm thinking I want to sign us up again next year.

I mean, when else am I going to eat rainbow chard and kale and discover that the inside of a purple cabbage, when cut just right, looks like a Christmas tree???

the things runners do

Look what running's done to my toe. Have you ever seen anything like it? I haven't. I'm obsessed. Nearly every day I examine it and exclaim about how it's morphed into an even more horrendous iteration of the Most Disgusting Toe Ever. I mean, a month ago, it looked like this:

And a couple weeks ago it looked like this:

Not bad at all, but I was equally obsessed. How naive I was! At least then it still resembled a toe -- now it's just a blackened stub of unidentifiable tissues.

But you know what? I think I'm obsessed because secretly (well, not so secretly anymore) I'm really proud of that toe. It's one of the few outward signs I have of all the miles I've been putting in. A battle scar of the 6am alarms, the 95-degree-heat-index workouts, the sore muscles, the chaffing in places where you least want chaffing, the hours of pounding the pavement.

I've truly enjoyed training for this marathon, and I love running now more than I ever have before. I'm proud of my long runs, my faster times, my hill workouts, and my determination to run every run, even if it means pushing through shin splints and tight quads and sleep deprivation to do it.

I just apologize to all of you who have been, and who will become, victims of this pride as I show off my rotting toe to friends, family and coworkers alike. Thanks for humoring me, thanks for your support, and thanks for not threatening to vomit on my feet if I make you examine The Toe one more time.

You're the best.